You may not realize how often you use batteries until you have to operate for a few hours without electricity. Batteries are great at keeping a charge in our mobile devices, but the components that help generate these charges wreak havoc in landfills.

You can use Earth911 to find out where to recycle batteries for a number of devices, including your car and cell phone. Here's eight ways to optimize your battery use so you'll create less waste in the first place.

Today there are roughly 2 million hybrids in the
global car park of 820 million vehicles—or far less
than 1 percent. And there are fewer than 200 plug-in
hybrids. Before we start thinking about other uses for
the battery packs in such vehicles, Kjaer all but begged
his audience, “let's just get the batteries driving the
wheels
first!”

In support of the State of California Renewables Portfolio Standard, the California ISO (CAISO) has worked with Participating Transmission Owners, the California Energy Commission, the California Public Utilities Commission, industry experts, adjacent control areas and owners/developers of renewable resources to identify integration issues and solutions for the integration of large amounts of renewable resources into the CAISO Control Area.

GM's engineers have been flogging the mules -- known formally as "engineering development vehicles" -- pretty hard for a couple of months now and they've got the lithium-ion batteries and electric drivetrain pretty much sorted. Lutz finally got a chance to take one of the range-extended electric vehicles for a spin and notes on his blog, "While the car is still most definitely a work in progress, the thrill of driving electrically -- that instant, silent torque -- is certainly present and accounted for."

A roll-out possibly to close for comfort, but backed up by a corporate release, not aspirations in the blogosphere. 2 years is pretty close, and actually about the time that the new renewables directive is expected to enter into force in the EU.

You think a Tesla Roadster is news? Try flying in the Electra, a single-seater airplane with a 25 horsepower motor and 47 (105 lbs) kilograms of lithium-polymer batteries. Anne Lavrand, the president of the APAME group, said. "This will be a real aeroplane that will have an airworthiness certificate. It's a machine built for anyone with a pilot's license."

Charles Bremner, Times, UK offers up some great news for air travelers. The dream of inexpensive, ecofriendly aviation has come closer to reality after a French test pilot achieved the first flight in a conventional light aircraft powered by an electric motor. The Electra, a wood-and-fabric single-seater, flew for 48 minutes for 50km (30 miles) around the southern Alps, winning a global race to apply battery power to a fixed-wing standard aircraft….Electric power for larger aircraft, including airliners, is also on the horizon, with research by Nasa and Boeing into the holy grail of the field: hydrogen-fed fuel cells. These will drive electric motors with power like those on French high-speed trains.

This month sees the launch of the Elettrica, the first production electric car on the UK market with the option of a lithium power supply. The car is said to provide almost twice the range of other small electric cars at 70 miles.